From
The Wife and Other Stories, translated
from the Russian by Constance Garnett,
The MacMillan Company, New York, 1918.
Text adapted from
the online version at the
University of Virginia. Creation of machine-readable version:
Judy Boss for the Electronic Text Center at the
University of Virginia Library, by
Carolyn Fay, final checking David Seaman.

The Grasshopper

By Anton Chekhov

I

ALL Olga Ivanovna's
friends and acquaintances were at her wedding.

"Look at him; isn't it
true that there is something in him?" she said
to her friends, with a nod towards her husband,
as though she wanted to explain why she was
marrying a simple, very ordinary, and in no way
remarkable man.

Her
husband, Osip Stepanitch Dymov, was a doctor, and
only of the rank of a titular councillor. He
was on the staff of two hospitals: in one
a ward-surgeon and in the other a dissecting
demonstrator. Every day from nine to twelve
he saw patients and was busy in his ward, and
after twelve o'clock he went by tram to the
other hospital, where he dissected. His private
practice was a small one, not worth more than
five hundred roubles a year. That was all. What
more could one say about him? Meanwhile, Olga
Ivanovna and her friends and acquaintances were
not quite ordinary people. Every one of them was
remarkable in some way, and more or less famous;
already had made a reputation and was looked
upon as a celebrity; or if not yet a celebrity,
gave brilliant promise of becoming one. There
was an actor from the Dramatic Theatre, who was
a
great talent of established reputation, as well
as an elegant, intelligent, and modest man,
and a capital elocutionist, and who taught
Olga Ivanovna to recite; there was a singer
from the opera, a good-natured, fat man who
assured Olga Ivanovna, with a sigh, that she
was ruining herself, that if she would take
herself in hand and not be lazy she might make
a remarkable singer; then there were several
artists, and chief among them Ryabovsky, a very
handsome, fair young man of five-and-twenty
who painted genre pieces, animal studies,
and landscapes, was successful at exhibitions,
and had sold his last picture for five hundred
roubles. He touched up Olga Ivanovna's sketches,
and used to say she might do something. Then
a violoncellist, whose instrument used to sob,
and who openly declared that of all the ladies
of his acquaintance the only one who could
accompany him was Olga Ivanovna; then there
was a literary man, young but already well
known, who had written stories, novels, and
plays. Who else? Why, Vassily Vassilyitch, a
landowner and amateur illustrator and vignettist,
with a great feeling for the old Russian style,
the old ballad and epic. On paper, on china,
and on smoked plates, he produced literally
marvels. In the midst of this free artistic
company, spoiled by fortune, though refined
and modest, who recalled the existence of
doctors only in times of illness, and to whom
the name of Dymov sounded in no way different
from Sidorov or Tarasov -- in the midst of this
company Dymov seemed strange, not wanted, and
small, though he was tall and broad-shouldered.
He looked as though he
had on somebody else's coat,
and his beard was like a shopman's. Though if
he had been a writer or an artist, they would
have said that his beard reminded them of Zola.

An artist said to
Olga Ivanovna that with her flaxen hair and
in her wedding-dress she was very much like a
graceful cherry-tree when it is covered all
over with delicate white blossoms in spring.

"Oh, let me tell
you," said Olga Ivanovna, taking his arm,
"how it was it all came to pass so suddenly.
Listen, listen! . . . I must tell you that my
father was on the same staff at the hospital
as Dymov. When my poor father was taken ill,
Dymov watched for days and nights together
at his bedside. Such self-sacrifice! Listen,
Ryabovsky! You, my writer, listen; it is very
interesting! Come nearer. Such self-sacrifice,
such genuine sympathy! I sat up with my father,
and did not sleep for nights, either. And all
at once -- the princess had won the hero's heart
-- my Dymov fell head over ears in love. Really,
fate is so strange at times! Well, after my
father's death he came to see me sometimes, met
me in the street, and one fine evening, all at
once he made me an offer . . . like snow upon my
head. . . . I lay awake all night, crying, and
fell hellishly in love myself. And here, as you
see, I am his wife. There really is something
strong, powerful, bearlike about him, isn't
there? Now his face is turned three-quarters
towards us in a bad light, but when he
turns round look at his forehead. Ryabovsky,
what do you say to that forehead? Dymov,
we are talking about you!" she called to
her husband. "Come
here; hold out your
honest hand to Ryabovsky. . . . That's right,
be friends."

Dymov,
with a naive and good-natured smile,
held out his hand to Ryabovsky, and said:

"Very glad to meet
you. There was a Ryabovsky in my year at
the medical school. Was he a relation
of yours?"

II

Olga Ivanovna was
twenty-two, Dymov was thirty-one. They got on
splendidly together when they were married. Olga
Ivanovna hung all her drawing-room walls
with her own and other people's sketches, in
frames and without frames, and near the piano
and furniture arranged picturesque corners
with Japanese parasols, easels, daggers, busts,
photographs, and rags of many colours. . . . In
the dining-room she papered the walls with
peasant woodcuts, hung up bark shoes and sickles,
stood in a corner a scythe and a rake, and so
achieved a dining-room in the Russian style. In
her bedroom she draped the ceiling and the walls
with dark cloths to make it like a cavern, hung
a Venetian lantern over the beds, and at the
door set a figure with a halberd. And every one
thought that the young people had a very charming
little home.

When she
got up at eleven o'clock every morning, Olga
Ivanovna played the piano or, if it were sunny,
painted something in oils. Then between twelve
and one she drove to her dressmaker's. As Dymov
and she had very little money, only just enough,
she and
her dressmaker were often put to clever shifts to
enable her to appear constantly in new dresses
and make a sensation with them. Very often out
of an old dyed dress, out of bits of tulle,
lace, plush, and silk, costing nothing, perfect
marvels were created, something bewitching --
not a dress, but a dream. From the dressmaker's
Olga Ivanovna usually drove to some actress of
her acquaintance to hear the latest theatrical
gossip, and incidentally to try and get hold of
tickets for the first night of some new play or
for a benefit performance. From the actress's
she had to go to some artist's studio or to
some exhibition or to see some celebrity --
either to pay a visit or to give an invitation
or simply to have a chat. And everywhere
she met with a gay and friendly welcome, and
was assured that she was good, that she was
sweet, that she was rare. . . . Those whom she
called great and famous received her as one of
themselves, as an equal, and predicted with one
voice that, with her talents, her taste, and
her intelligence, she would do great things if
she concentrated herself. She sang, she played
the piano, she painted in oils, she carved,
she took part in amateur performances; and all
this not just anyhow, but all with talent,
whether she made lanterns for an illumination
or dressed up or tied somebody's cravat --
everything she did was exceptionally graceful,
artistic, and charming. But her talents showed
themselves in nothing so clearly as in her
faculty for quickly becoming acquainted and
on intimate terms with celebrated people. No
sooner did any one become ever so little
celebrated, and set people talking about
him,
than she made his acquaintance, got on friendly
terms the same day, and invited him to her
house. Every new acquaintance she made was
a veritable fête for her. She adored
celebrated people, was proud of them, dreamed
of them every night. She craved for them, and
never could satisfy her craving. The old ones
departed and were forgotten, new ones came
to replace them, but to these, too, she soon
grew accustomed or was disappointed in them,
and began eagerly seeking for fresh great men,
finding them and seeking for them again. What
for?

Between
four and five she dined at home with her
husband. His simplicity, good sense, and
kind-heartedness touched her and moved her up
to enthusiasm. She was constantly jumping up,
impulsively hugging his head and showering
kisses on it.

"You
are a clever, generous man, Dymov,"
she used to say, "but you have one very
serious defect. You take absolutely no
interest in art. You don't believe in music
or painting."

"I
don't understand them," he would say mildly.
"I have spent all my life in working at
natural science and medicine, and I have never
had time to take an interest in the arts."

"But, you know, that's
awful, Dymov!"

"Why
so? Your friends don't know anything of
science or medicine, but you don't reproach
them with it. Every one has his own line. I
don't understand landscapes and operas,
but the way I look at it is that if one
set of sensible people devote their whole
lives to them, and other sensible people
pay
immense sums for them, they must be of use. I
don't understand them, but not understanding
does not imply disbelieving in them."

"Let me shake your
honest hand!"

After
dinner Olga Ivanovna would drive off to see
her friends, then to a theatre or to a concert,
and she returned home after midnight. So it
was every day.

On
Wednesdays she had "At Homes." At these "At
Homes" the hostess and her guests did not
play cards and did not dance, but entertained
themselves with various arts. An actor from the
Dramatic Theatre recited, a singer sang, artists
sketched in the albums of which Olga Ivanovna
had a great number, the violoncellist played,
and the hostess herself sketched, carved, sang,
and played accompaniments. In the intervals
between the recitations, music, and singing,
they talked and argued about literature, the
theatre, and painting. There were no ladies, for
Olga Ivanovna considered all ladies wearisome and
vulgar except actresses and her dressmaker. Not
one of these entertainments passed without the
hostess starting at every ring at the bell,
and saying, with a triumphant expression,
"It is he," meaning by "he," of course,
some new celebrity. Dymov was not in the
drawing-room, and no one remembered his
existence. But exactly at half-past eleven
the door leading into the dining-room opened,
and Dymov would appear with his good-natured,
gentle smile and say, rubbing his hands:

"Come to supper,
gentlemen."

They
all went into the dining-room, and every
time found
on the table exactly the same things: a dish
of oysters, a piece of ham or veal, sardines,
cheese, caviare, mushrooms, vodka, and two
decanters of wine.

"My
dear mâitre d'hôtel!" Olga Ivanovna would say,
clasping her hands with enthusiasm, "you are
simply fascinating! My friends, look at his
forehead! Dymov, turn your profile. Look! he has
the face of a Bengal tiger and an expression as
kind and sweet as a gazelle. Ah, the darling!"

The visitors ate, and,
looking at Dymov, thought, "He really is a
nice fellow"; but they soon forgot about him,
and went on talking about the theatre, music,
and painting.

The young
people were happy, and their life flowed on
without a hitch.

The
third week of their honeymoon was spent, however,
not quite happily -- sadly, indeed. Dymov caught
erysipelas in the hospital, was in bed for
six days, and had to have his beautiful black
hair cropped. Olga Ivanovna sat beside him
and wept bitterly, but when he was better she
put a white handkerchief on his shaven head and
began to paint him as a Bedouin. And they were
both in good spirits. Three days after he had
begun to go back to the hospital he had another
mischance.

"I have
no luck, little mother," he said one day at
dinner. "I had four dissections to do today,
and I cut two of my fingers at one. And
I did not notice it till I got home."

Olga Ivanovna was
alarmed. He smiled, and
told her that it did not
matter, and that he often cut his hands when he
was dissecting.

"I get
absorbed, little mother, and grow careless."

Olga Ivanovna dreaded
symptoms of blood-poisoning, and prayed about
it every night, but all went well. And again
life flowed on peaceful and happy, free from
grief and anxiety. The present was happy,
and to follow it spring was at hand, already
smiling in the distance, and promising a
thousand delights. There would be no end to
their happiness. In April, May and June a
summer villa a good distance out of town; walks,
sketching, fishing, nightingales; and then from
July right on to autumn an artist's tour on the
Volga, and in this tour Olga Ivanovna would
take part as an indispensable member of the
society. She had already had made for her two
travelling dresses of linen, had bought paints,
brushes, canvases, and a new palette for the
journey. Almost every day Ryabovsky visited
her to see what progress she was making in her
painting; when she showed him her painting,
he used to thrust his hands deep into his
pockets, compress his lips, sniff, and say:

"Ye -- es . . . ! That
cloud of yours is screaming: it's not in the
evening light. The foreground is somehow chewed
up, and there is something, you know, not the
thing. . . . And your cottage is weighed down
and whines pitifully. That corner ought to have
been taken more in shadow, but on the whole it
is not bad; I like it."

And
the more incomprehensible he talked, the
more readily Olga Ivanovna understood
him.

III

After dinner on the second
day of Trinity week, Dymov bought some sweets
and some savouries and went down to the villa
to see his wife. He had not seen her for a
fortnight, and missed her terribly. As he
sat in the train and afterwards as he looked
for his villa in a big wood, he felt all the
while hungry and weary, and dreamed of how he
would have supper in freedom with his wife,
then tumble into bed and to sleep. And he was
delighted as he looked at his parcel, in which
there was caviare, cheese, and white salmon.

The sun was setting
by the time he found his villa and recognized
it. The old servant told him that her mistress
was not at home, but that most likely she
would soon be in. The villa, very uninviting
in appearance, with low ceilings papered with
writing-paper and with uneven floors full of
crevices, consisted only of three rooms. In
one there was a bed, in the second there were
canvases, brushes, greasy papers, and men's
overcoats and hats lying about on the chairs and
in the windows, while in the third Dymov found
three unknown men; two were dark-haired and
had beards, the other was clean-shaven and fat,
apparently an actor. There was a samovar boiling
on the table.

"What
do you want?" asked the actor in a bass
voice, looking at Dymov ungraciously. "Do you
want Olga
Ivanovna? Wait a minute; she will be here
directly."

Dymov
sat down and waited. One of the dark-haired
men, looking sleepily and listlessly at him,
poured himself out a glass of tea, and asked:

"Perhaps you would like
some tea?"

Dymov
was both hungry and thirsty, but he refused
tea for fear of spoiling his supper. Soon
he heard footsteps and a familiar laugh;
a door slammed, and Olga Ivanovna ran into
the room, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and
carrying a box in her hand; she was followed
by Ryabovsky, rosy and good-humoured,
carrying a big umbrella and a camp-stool.

"Dymov!" cried
Olga Ivanovna, and she flushed crimson with
pleasure. "Dymov!" she repeated, laying her head
and both arms on his bosom. "Is that you? Why
haven't you come for so long? Why? Why?"

"When could I, little
mother? I am always busy, and whenever I am free
it always happens somehow that the train does
not fit."

"But how
glad I am to see you! I have been dreaming about
you the whole night, the whole night, and I was
afraid you must be ill. Ah! if you only knew
how sweet you are! You have come in the nick of
time! You will be my salvation! You are the only
person who can save me! There is to be a most
original wedding here tomorrow," she went on,
laughing, and tying her husband's cravat. "A
young telegraph clerk at the station, called
Tchikeldyeev, is going to be married. He is a
handsome
young man and -- well, not stupid, and you
know there is something strong, bearlike
in his face . . . you might paint him as a
young Norman. We summer visitors take a great
interest in him, and have promised to be at
his wedding. . . . He is a lonely, timid man,
not well off, and of course it would be a shame
not to be sympathetic to him. Fancy! the wedding
will be after the service; then we shall all walk
from the church to the bride's lodgings . . .
you see the wood, the birds singing, patches
of sunlight on the grass, and all of us spots
of different colours against the bright green
background -- very original, in the style of the
French impressionists. But, Dymov, what am I to
go to the church in?" said Olga Ivanovna, and
she looked as though she were going to cry. "I
have nothing here, literally nothing! no dress,
no flowers, no gloves . . . you must save
me. Since you have come, fate itself bids you
save me. Take the keys, my precious, go home
and get my pink dress from the wardrobe. You
remember it; it hangs in front. . . . Then,
in the storeroom, on the floor, on the right
side, you will see two cardboard boxes. When
you open the top one you will see tulle, heaps
of tulle and rags of all sorts, and under them
flowers. Take out all the flowers carefully,
try not to crush them, darling; I will choose
among them later. . . . And buy me some gloves."

"Very well!" said Dymov;
"I will go tomorrow and send them to you."

"Tomorrow?" asked
Olga Ivanovna, and she looked at him
surprised. "You won't have time tomorrow.
The first
train goes tomorrow at nine, and the wedding's
at eleven. No, darling, it must be today;
it absolutely must be today. If you won't be
able to come tomorrow, send them by a messenger.
Come, you must run along. . . . The passenger
train will be in directly; don't miss it,
darling."

"Very well."

"Oh, how sorry I
am to let you go!" said Olga Ivanovna, and
tears came into her eyes. "And why did I
promise that telegraph clerk, like a silly?"

Dymov hurriedly
drank a glass of tea, took a cracknel, and,
smiling gently, went to the station. And the
caviare, the cheese, and the white salmon
were eaten by the two dark gentlemen and
the fat actor.

IV

On a still moonlight night
in July Olga Ivanovna was standing on the deck
of a Volga steamer and looking alternately at
the water and at the picturesque banks. Beside
her was standing Ryabovsky, telling her the
black shadows on the water were not shadows,
but a dream, that it would be sweet to sink
into forgetfulness, to die, to become a memory
in the sight of that enchanted water with the
fantastic glimmer, in sight of the fathomless
sky and the mournful, dreamy shores that
told of the vanity of our life and of the
existence of something higher, blessed, and
eternal. The past was vulgar and uninteresting,
the future was trivial, and that marvellous
night, unique in a lifetime, would soon be
over, would blend with eternity; then, why
live?

And Olga Ivanovna
listened alternately to Ryabovsky's voice and
the silence of the night, and thought of her
being immortal and never dying. The turquoise
colour of the water, such as she had never seen
before, the sky, the river-banks, the black
shadows, and the unaccountable joy that flooded
her soul, all told her that she would make a
great artist, and that somewhere in the distance,
in the infinite space beyond the moonlight,
success, glory, the love of the people, lay
awaiting her. . . . When she gazed steadily
without blinking into the distance, she seemed
to see crowds of people, lights, triumphant
strains of music, cries of enthusiasm, she
herself in a white dress, and flowers showered
upon her from all sides. She thought, too, that
beside her, leaning with his elbows on the rail
of the steamer, there was standing a real great
man, a genius, one of God's elect. . . . All that
he had created up to the present was fine, new,
and extraordinary, but what he would create in
time, when with maturity his rare talent reached
its full development, would be astounding,
immeasurably sublime; and that could be seen by
his face, by his manner of expressing himself and
his attitude to nature. He talked of shadows,
of the tones of evening, of the moonlight,
in a special way, in a language of his own, so
that one could not help feeling the fascination
of his power over nature. He was very handsome,
original, and his life, free, independent, aloof
from all common cares, was like the life of
a bird.

"It's growing
cooler," said Olga Ivanovna, and she gave a
shudder.

Ryabovsky wrapped
her in his cloak, and said mournfully:

"I feel that I am
in your power; I am a slave. Why are you so
enchanting today?"

He
kept staring intently at her, and his eyes
were terrible. And she was afraid to look
at him.

"I love
you madly," he whispered, breathing on her
cheek. "Say one word to me and I will not
go on living; I will give up art . . ." he
muttered in violent emotion. "Love me, love
. . ."

"Don't
talk like that," said Olga Ivanovna, covering
her eyes. "It's dreadful! How about Dymov?"

"What of Dymov? Why
Dymov? What have I to do with Dymov? The Volga,
the moon, beauty, my love, ecstasy, and there
is no such thing as Dymov. . . . Ah! I
don't know . . . I don't care about the
past; give me one moment, one instant!"

Olga Ivanovna's heart
began to throb. She tried to think about her
husband, but all her past, with her wedding,
with Dymov, and with her "At Homes," seemed to
her petty, trivial, dingy, unnecessary, and far,
far away. . . . Yes, really, what of Dymov?
Why Dymov? What had she to do with Dymov?
Had he any existence in nature, or was he only
a dream?

"For
him, a simple and ordinary man the happiness
he has had already is enough," she thought,
covering her face with her hands. "Let them
con-demn me, let them curse me, but in spite
of them all I will go to my ruin; I will go
to my ruin! . . . One
must experience everything
in life. My God! how terrible and how glorious!"

"Well? Well?" muttered
the artist, embracing her, and greedily
kissing the hands with which she feebly
tried to thrust him from her. "You love
me? Yes? Yes? Oh, what a night! marvellous
night!"

"Yes,
what a night!" she whispered, looking into
his eyes, which were bright with tears.

Then she looked round
quickly, put her arms round him, and kissed him
on the lips.

"We are
nearing Kineshmo!" said some one on the other
side of the deck.

They
heard heavy footsteps; it was a
waiter from the refreshment-bar.

"Waiter,"
said Olga Ivanovna, laughing and crying
with happiness, "bring us some wine."

The artist, pale with
emotion, sat on the seat, looking at Olga
Ivanovna with adoring, grateful eyes; then he
closed his eyes, and said, smiling languidly:

"I am tired."

And he leaned his head
against the rail.

V

On the second of September
the day was warm and still, but overcast. In
the early morning a light mist had hung over
the Volga, and after nine o'clock it had begun
to spout with rain. And there seemed no hope
of the sky clearing. Over their morning tea
Ryabovsky told Olga Ivanovna that painting was
the
most ungrateful and boring art, that he was not
an artist, that none but fools thought that he
had any talent, and all at once, for no rhyme
or reason, he snatched up a knife and with
it scraped over his very best sketch. After
his tea he sat plunged in gloom at the window
and gazed at the Volga. And now the Volga
was dingy, all of one even colour without
a gleam of light, cold-looking. Everything,
everything recalled the approach of dreary,
gloomy autumn. And it seemed as though nature
had removed now from the Volga the sumptuous
green covers from the banks, the brilliant
reflections of the sunbeams, the transparent
blue distance, and all its smart gala array,
and had packed it away in boxes till the coming
spring, and the crows were flying above the
Volga and crying tauntingly, "Bare, bare!"

Ryabovsky heard their
cawing, and thought he had already gone off
and lost his talent, that everything in this
world was relative, conditional, and stupid,
and that he ought not to have taken up with
this woman. . . . In short, he was out of humour
and depressed.

Olga
Ivanovna sat behind the screen on the bed,
and, passing her fingers through her lovely
flaxen hair, pictured herself first in the
drawing-room, then in the bedroom, then in
her husband's study; her imagination carried
her to the theatre, to the dress-maker, to
her distinguished friends. Were they getting
something up now? Did they think of her?
The season had begun by now, and it would
be time to think about her "At Homes." And
Dymov?
Dear Dymov! with what gentleness and childlike
pathos he kept begging her in his letters to
make haste and come home! Every month he sent
her seventy-five roubles, and when she wrote
him that she had lent the artists a hundred
roubles, he sent that hundred too. What a kind,
generous-hearted man! The travelling wearied
Olga Ivanovna; she was bored; and she longed
to get away from the peasants, from the damp
smell of the river, and to cast off the feeling
of physical uncleanliness of which she was
conscious all the time, living in the peasants'
huts and wandering from village to village. If
Ryabovsky had not given his word to the artists
that he would stay with them till the twentieth
of September, they might have gone away that
very day. And how nice that would have been!

"But you
have a sketch with a cloudy sky," said Olga
Ivanovna, coming from behind the screen.
"Do you remember, in the right foreground
forest trees, on the left a herd of cows
and geese? You might finish it now."

"Aie!" the artist
scowled. "Finish it! Can you imagine I am
such a fool that I don't know what I want
to do?"

"How you
have changed to me!" sighed Olga Ivanovna.

"Well, a good
thing too!"

Olga
Ivanovna's face quivered; she
moved away to the stove and began to
cry.

"Well, that's the
last straw -- crying! Give over! I have
a thousand reasons for tears, but I am not
crying."

"A thousand
reasons!" cried Olga Ivanovna. "The chief one
is that you are weary of me. Yes!" she said,
and broke into sobs. "If one is to tell the
truth, you are ashamed of our love. You keep
trying to prevent the artists from noticing
it, though it is impossible to conceal it, and
they have known all about it for ever so long."

"Olga, one thing I beg
you," said the artist in an imploring voice,
laying his hand on his heart -- "one thing,
don't worry me! I want nothing else from you!"

"But swear that you love
me still!"

"This is
agony!" the artist hissed through his teeth, and
he jumped up. "It will end by my throwing myself
in the Volga or going out of my mind! Let me
alone!"

"Come, kill
me, kill me!" cried Olga Ivanovna. "Kill me!"

She sobbed again,
and went behind the screen. There was a swish of
rain on the straw thatch of the hut. Ryabovsky
clutched his head and strode up and down the
hut; then with a resolute face, as though bent
on proving something to somebody, put on his
cap, slung his gun over his shoulder, and went
out of the hut.

After
he had gone, Olga Ivanovna lay a long time on
the bed, crying. At first she thought it would
be a good thing to poison herself, so that
when Ryabovsky came back he would find her dead;
then her
imagination carried her to her drawing-room, to
her husband's study, and she imagined herself
sitting motionless beside Dymov and enjoying
the physical peace and cleanliness, and in
the evening sitting in the theatre, listening
to Mazini. And a yearning for civilization,
for the noise and bustle of the town, for
celebrated people sent a pang to her heart. A
peasant woman came into the hut and began in
a leisurely way lighting the stove to get the
dinner. There was a smell of charcoal fumes,
and the air was filled with bluish smoke. The
artists came in, in muddy high boots and with
faces wet with rain, examined their sketches,
and comforted themselves by saying that the Volga
had its charms even in bad weather. On the wall
the cheap clock went "tic-tic-tic." . . . The
flies, feeling chilled, crowded round the
ikon in the corner, buzzing, and one could
hear the cockroaches scurrying about among
the thick portfolios under the seats. . . .

Ryabovsky came home as
the sun was setting. He flung his cap on the
table, and, without removing his muddy boots,
sank pale and exhausted on the bench and closed
his eyes.

To be nice to him and to
show she was not cross, Olga Ivanovna went up
to him, gave him a silent kiss, and passed the
comb through his fair hair. She meant to comb it
for him.

"What's
that?" he said, starting as though
something cold had touched him, and he
opened his eyes. "What is it? Please let me
alone."

He thrust her off, and
moved away. And it seemed to her that there was
a look of aversion and annoyance on his face.

At that time the peasant
woman cautiously carried him, in both hands,
a plate of cabbage-soup. And Olga Ivanovna saw
how she wetted her fat fingers in it. And the
dirty peasant woman, standing with her body
thrust forward, and the cabbage-soup which
Ryabovsky began eating greedily, and the hut,
and their whole way of life, which she at first
had so loved for its simplicity and artistic
disorder, seemed horrible to her now. She
suddenly felt insulted, and said coldly:

"We must part for a
time, or else from boredom we shall quarrel
in earnest. I am sick of this; I am going
today."

"Going
how? Astride on a broomstick?"

"Today is Thursday,
so the steamer will be here at half-past
nine."

"Eh? Yes,
yes. . . . Well, go, then . . ." Ryabovsky said
softly, wiping his mouth with a towel instead
of a dinner napkin. "You are dull and have
nothing to do here, and one would have to be
a great egoist to try and keep you. Go home,
and we shall meet again after the twentieth."

Olga Ivanovna packed
in good spirits. Her cheeks positively glowed
with pleasure. Could it really be true,
she asked herself, that she would soon be
writing in her drawing-room and sleeping
in her bedroom, and dining with a cloth
on the table? A weight was lifted from her
heart, and she no longer felt angry with the
artist.

"My paints and
brushes I will leave with you, Ryabovsky," she
said. "You can bring what's left. . . . Mind,
now, don't be lazy here when I am gone; don't
mope, but work. You are such a splendid fellow,
Ryabovsky!"

At ten
o'clock Ryabovsky gave her a farewell kiss,
in order, as she thought, to avoid kissing
her on the steamer before the artists,
and went with her to the landing-stage. The
steamer soon came up and carried her away.

She arrived home
two and a half days later. Breathless with
excitement, she went, without taking off her hat
or waterproof, into the drawing-room and thence
into the dining-room. Dymov, with his waistcoat
unbuttoned and no coat, was sitting at the table
sharpening a knife on a fork; before him lay a
grouse on a plate. As Olga Ivanovna went into
the flat she was convinced that it was essential
to hide everything from her husband, and that
she would have the strength and skill to do so;
but now, when she saw his broad, mild, happy
smile, and shining, joyful eyes, she felt that
to deceive this man was as vile, as revolting,
and as impossible and out of her power as to
bear false witness, to steal, or to kill, and
in a flash she resolved to tell him all that had
happened. Letting him kiss and embrace her, she
sank down on her knees before him and hid her
face.

"What is it, what
is it, little mother?" he asked tenderly. "Were
you homesick?"

She
raised her face, red with shame, and gazed
at him with a guilty and imploring look, but
fear
and shame prevented her from telling him the
truth.

"Nothing,"
she said; "it's just nothing. . . ."

"Let us sit
down," he said, raising her and seating
her at the table. "That's right, eat the
grouse. You are starving, poor darling."

She eagerly breathed
in the atmosphere of home and ate the grouse,
while he watched her with tenderness and laughed
with delight.

VI

Apparently, by the middle
of the winter Dymov began to suspect that he
was being deceived. As though his conscience was
not clear, he could not look his wife straight
in the face, did not smile with delight when he
met her, and to avoid being left alone with her,
he often brought in to dinner his colleague,
Korostelev, a little close-cropped man with a
wrinkled face, who kept buttoning and unbuttoning
his reefer jacket with embarrassment when he
talked with Olga Ivanovna, and then with his
right hand nipped his left moustache. At dinner
the two doctors talked about the fact that a
displacement of the diaphragm was sometimes
accompanied by irregularities of the heart,
or that a great number of neurotic complaints
were met with of late, or that Dymov had the
day before found a cancer of the lower abdomen
while dissecting a corpse with the diagnosis
of pernicious anaemia. And it seemed as though
they were talking of medicine to give Olga
Ivanovna a chance of being silent -- that is,
of not lying. After dinner Korostelev sat down
to
the piano, while Dymov sighed and said to him:

"Ech, brother --
well, well! Play something melancholy."

Hunching up his
shoulders and stretching his fingers wide
apart, Korostelev played some chords and began
singing in a tenor voice, "Show me the abode
where the Russian peasant would not groan,"
while Dymov sighed once more, propped his
head on his fist, and sank into thought.

Olga Ivanovna had
been extremely imprudent in her conduct of
late. Every morning she woke up in a very bad
humour and with the thought that she no longer
cared for Ryabovsky, and that, thank God, it was
all over now. But as she drank her coffee she
reflected that Ryabovsky had robbed her of her
husband, and that now she was left with neither
her husband nor Ryabovsky; then she remembered
talks she had heard among her acquaintances
of a picture Ryabovsky was preparing for the
exhibition, something striking, a mixture of
genre and landscape, in the style of Polyenov,
about which every one who had been into his
studio went into raptures; and this, of course,
she mused, he had created under her influence,
and altogether, thanks to her influence,
he had greatly changed for the better. Her
influence was so beneficent and essential that
if she were to leave him he might perhaps go to
ruin. And she remembered, too, that the last
time he had come to see her in a great-coat
with flecks on it and a new tie, he had asked
her languidly:

"Am
I beautiful?"

And
with his elegance, his long curls, and his
blue
eyes, he really was very beautiful (or perhaps
it only seemed so), and he had been affectionate
to her.

Considering
and remembering many things Olga Ivanovna dressed
and in great agitation drove to Ryabovsky's
studio. She found him in high spirits, and
enchanted with his really magnificent picture.
He was dancing about and playing the fool and
answering serious questions with jokes. Olga
Ivanovna was jealous of the picture and hated it,
but from politeness she stood before the picture
for five minutes in silence, and, heaving
a sigh, as though before a holy shrine, said
softly:

"Yes, you
have never painted anything like it before. Do
you know, it is positively awe-inspiring?"

And then she began
beseeching him to love her and not to cast her
off, to have pity on her in her misery and her
wretchedness. She shed tears, kissed his hands,
insisted on his swearing that he loved her, told
him that without her good influence he would go
astray and be ruined. And, when she had spoilt
his good-humour, feeling herself humiliated,
she would drive off to her dressmaker or to
an actress of her acquaintance to try and get
theatre tickets.

If
she did not find him at his studio she left
a letter in which she swore that if he did
not come to see her that day she would poison
herself. He was scared, came to see her, and
stayed to dinner. Regardless of her husband's
presence, he would say rude things to her, and
she would answer him in
the same way. Both felt
they were a burden to each other, that they were
tyrants and enemies, and were wrathful, and in
their wrath did not notice that their behaviour
was unseemly, and that even Korostelev, with his
close-cropped head, saw it all. After dinner
Ryabovsky made haste to say good-bye and
get away.

"Where
are you off to?" Olga Ivanovna would ask
him in the hall, looking at him with hatred.

Scowling and screwing
up his eyes, he mentioned some lady of their
acquaintance, and it was evident that he was
laughing at her jealousy and wanted to annoy
her. She went to her bedroom and lay down
on her bed; from jealousy, anger, a sense of
humiliation and shame, she bit the pillow and
began sobbing aloud. Dymov left Korostelev in the
drawing-room, went into the bedroom, and with
a desperate and embarrassed face said softly:

"Don't cry so loud,
little mother; there's no need. You must
be quiet about it. You must not let people
see. . . . You know what is done is done, and
can't be mended."

Not
knowing how to ease the burden of her jealousy,
which actually set her temples throbbing
with pain, and thinking still that things
might be set right, she would wash, powder
her tear-stained face, and fly off to the
lady mentioned.

Not
finding Ryabovsky with her, she would drive off
to a second, then to a third. At first she was
ashamed to go about like this, but afterwards
she got used to it, and it would happen that in
one evening she would make the round of all her
female
acquaintances in search of Ryabovsky, and they
all understood it.

One
day she said to Ryabovsky of her
husband:

"That
man crushes me with his magnanimity."

This phrase pleased
her so much that when she met the artists who
knew of her affair with Ryabovsky she said every
time of her husband, with a vigorous movement
of her arm:

"That
man crushes me with his magnanimity."

Their manner of
life was the same as it had been the year
before. On Wednesdays they were "At Home",
an actor recited, the artists sketched. The
violoncellist played, a singer sang, and
invariably at half-past eleven the door leading
to the dining-room opened and Dymov, smiling,
said:

"Come to supper,
gentlemen."

As before,
Olga Ivanovna hunted celebrities, found them,
was not satisfied, and went in pursuit of fresh
ones. As before, she came back late every night;
but now Dymov was not, as last year, asleep,
but sitting in his study at work of some sort. He
went to bed at three o'clock and got up at eight.

One evening when she
was getting ready to go to the theatre and
standing before the pier glass, Dymov came into
her bedroom, wearing his dress-coat and a white
tie. He was smiling gently and looked into his
wife's face joyfully, as in old days; his face
was radiant.

"I
have just been defending my thesis," he
said, sitting down and smoothing his knees.

"Defending?" asked
Olga Ivanovna.

"Oh,
oh!" he laughed, and he craned his neck
to
see his wife's face in the mirror, for she
was still standing with her back to him,
doing up her hair. "Oh, oh," he repeated, "do
you know it's very possible they may offer me
the Readership in General Pathology? It seems
like it."

It was
evident from his beaming, blissful face that if
Olga Ivanovna had shared with him his joy and
triumph he would have forgiven her everything,
both the present and the future, and would
have forgotten everything, but she did not
understand what was meant by a "readership"
or by "general pathology"; besides, she was
afraid of being late for the theatre, and she
said nothing.

He sat
there another two minutes, and with a guilty
smile went away.

VII

It had been a very troubled
day.

Dymov had a very
bad headache; he had no breakfast, and did not
go to the hospital, but spent the whole time
lying on his sofa in the study. Olga Ivanovna
went as usual at midday to see Ryabovsky, to
show him her still-life sketch, and to ask him
why he had not been to see her the evening
before. The sketch seemed to her worthless,
and she had painted it only in order to have
an additional reason for going to the artist.

She went in to him
without ringing, and as she was taking off her
goloshes in the entry she heard a sound as of
something running softly in the studio, with a
feminine rustle of skirts; and as she hastened
to peep in
she caught a momentary glimpse of a bit of brown
petticoat, which vanished behind a big picture
draped, together with the easel, with black
calico, to the floor. There could be no doubt
that a woman was hiding there. How often Olga
Ivanovna herself had taken refuge behind that
picture!

Ryabovsky,
evidently much embarrassed, held out both
hands to her, as though surprised at her
arrival, and said with a forced smile:

"Aha! Very glad
to see you! Anything nice to tell me?"

Olga Ivanovna's
eyes filled with tears. She felt ashamed and
bitter, and would not for a million roubles
have consented to speak in the presence
of the outsider, the rival, the deceitful
woman who was standing now behind the
picture, and probably giggling malignantly.

"I have brought you
a sketch," she said timidly in a thin voice,
and her lips quivered. "Nature morte."

"Ah -- ah! . . . A
sketch?"

The
artist took the sketch in his hands,
and as he examined it walked, as it
were mechanically, into the other room.

From
the studio came the sound of hurried
footsteps and the rustle of a skirt.

So she had gone. Olga
Ivanovna wanted to
cream aloud, to hit
the artist on the head with something heavy,
but she could see nothing through her tears,
was crushed by her shame, and felt herself,
not Olga Ivanovna, not an artist, but a little
insect.

"I am tired
. . ." said the artist languidly, looking at
the sketch and tossing his head as though
struggling with drowsiness. "It's very nice,
of course, but here a sketch today, a sketch
last year, another sketch in a month . . . I
wonder you are not bored with them. If I were
you I should give up painting and work seriously
at music or something. You're not an artist,
you know, but a musician. But you can't think
how tired I am! I'll tell them to bring us some
tea, shall I?"

He
went out of the room, and Olga Ivanovna heard
him give some order to his footman. To avoid
farewells and explanations, and above all to
avoid bursting into sobs, she ran as fast
as she could, before Ryabovsky came back,
to the entry, put on her goloshes, and went
out into the street; then she breathed easily,
and felt she was free for ever from Ryabovsky
and from painting and from the burden of shame
which had so crushed her in the studio. It was
all over!

She drove
to her dressmaker's; then to see Barnay, who had
only arrived the day before; from Barnay to a
music-shop, and all the time she was thinking
how she would write Ryabovsky a cold, cruel
letter full of personal dignity, and how in the
spring or the summer she would go with Dymov to
the Crimea,
free herself finally from the past there, and
begin a new life.

On
getting home late in the evening she sat down in
the drawing-room, without taking off her things,
to begin the letter. Ryabovsky had told her she
was not an artist, and to pay him out she wrote
to him now that he painted the same thing every
year, and said exactly the same thing every day;
that he was at a standstill, and that nothing
more would come of him than had come already. She
wanted to write, too, that he owed a great
deal to her good influence, and that if he was
going wrong it was only because her influence
was paralysed by various dubious persons like
the one who had been hiding behind the picture
that day.

"Little
mother!" Dymov called from the study, without
opening the door.

"What
is it?"

"Don't come
in to me, but only come to the door -- that's
right. . . . The day before yesterday I must
have caught diphtheria at the hospital, and
now . . . I am ill. Make haste and send for
Korostelev."

Olga
Ivanovna always called her husband by
his surname, as she did all the men of her
acquaintance; she disliked his Christian name,
Osip, because it reminded her of the Osip in
Gogol and the silly pun on his name. But now
she cried:

"Osip,
it cannot be!"

"Send
for him; I feel ill," Dymov said behind the
door, and she could hear him go back to the
sofa and
lie down. "Send!" she heard his voice faintly.

For
no reason she took the candle and went into the
bedroom, and there, reflecting what she must
do, glanced casually at herself in the pier
glass. With her pale, frightened face, in a
jacket with sleeves high on the shoulders,
with yellow ruches on her bosom, and with
stripes running in unusual directions on her
skirt, she seemed to herself horrible and
disgusting. She suddenly felt poignantly sorry
for Dymov, for his boundless love for her,
for his young life, and even for the desolate
little bed in which he had not slept for so
long; and she remembered his habitual, gentle,
submissive smile. She wept bitterly, and wrote
an imploring letter to Korostelev. It was two
o'clock in the night.

VIII

When towards eight
o'clock in the morning Olga Ivanovna, her
head heavy from want of sleep and her hair
unbrushed, came out of her bedroom, looking
unattractive and with a guilty expression on
her face, a gentleman with a black beard,
apparently the doctor, passed by her into the
entry. There was a smell of drugs. Korostelev
was standing near the study door, twisting
his left moustache with his right hand.

"Excuse me,
I can't let you go in," he said surlily
to Olga
Ivanovna; "it's catching. Besides, it's
no use, really; he is delirious, anyway."

"Has he really
got diphtheria?" Olga Ivanovna asked in a
whisper.

"People
who wantonly risk infection ought to be
hauled up and punished for it," muttered
Korostelev, not answering Olga Ivanovna's
question. "Do you know why he caught it? On
Tuesday he was sucking up the mucus through
a pipette from a boy with diphtheria. And
what for? It was stupid. . . . Just from
folly. . . ."

"Is
it dangerous, very?" asked Olga Ivanovna.

"Yes; they say it is
the malignant form. We ought to send for Shrek
really."

A little
red-haired man with a long nose and a Jewish
accent arrived; then a tall, stooping, shaggy
individual, who looked like a head deacon; then
a stout young man with a red face and spectacles.
These were doctors who came to watch by turns
beside their colleague. Korostelev did not
go home when his turn was over, but remained
and wandered about the rooms like an uneasy
spirit. The maid kept getting tea for the
various doctors, and was constantly running to
the chemist, and there was no one to do the
rooms. There was a dismal stillness in the flat.

Olga Ivanovna sat in
her bedroom and thought that God was punishing
her for having deceived her husband. That
silent, unrepining, uncomprehended creature,
robbed by his mildness of all personality and
will, weak from excessive kindness, had been
suffering
in obscurity somewhere on his sofa, and had
not complained. And if he were to complain
even in delirium, the doctors watching by his
bedside would learn that diphtheria was not the
only cause of his sufferings. They would ask
Korostelev. He knew all about it, and it was not
for nothing that he looked at his friend's wife
with eyes that seemed to say that she was the
real chief criminal and diphtheria was only
her accomplice. She did not think now of the
moonlight evening on the Volga, nor the words of
love, nor their poetical life in the peasant's
hut. She thought only that from an idle whim,
from self-indulgence, she had sullied herself
all over from head to foot in something filthy,
sticky, which one could never wash off. . . .

"Oh, how fearfully false
I've been!" she thought, recalling the troubled
passion she had known with Ryabovsky. "Curse
it all! . . ."

At
four o'clock she dined with Korostelev. He did
nothing but scowl and drink red wine, and did
not eat a morsel. She ate nothing, either. At
one minute she was praying inwardly and vowing
to God that if Dymov recovered she would love
him again and be a faithful wife to him. Then,
forgetting herself for a minute, she would look
at Korostelev, and think: "Surely it must
be dull to be a humble, obscure person, not
remarkable in any way, especially with such
a wrinkled face and bad manners!" Then it
seemed to her that God would strike her dead
that minute for not having once been in her
husband's study, for fear of infection. And
altogether she had a dull, despondent feeling
and a conviction
that her life was
spoilt, and that there was no setting it right
anyhow. . . .

After
dinner darkness came on. When Olga
Ivanovna went into the drawing-room
Korostelev was asleep on the sofa, with a
gold-embroidered silk cushion under his head.

"Khee-poo-ah," he snored
-- "khee-poo-ah."

And
the doctors as they came to sit up and went
away again did not notice this disorder. The
fact that a strange man was asleep and snoring
in the drawing-room, and the sketches on the
walls and the exquisite decoration of the room,
and the fact that the lady of the house was
dishevelled and untidy -- all that aroused not
the slightest interest now. One of the doctors
chanced to laugh at something, and the laugh
had a strange and timid sound that made one's
heart ache.

When
Olga Ivanovna went into the drawing-room next
time, Korostelev was not asleep, but sitting up
and smoking.

"He
has diphtheria of the nasal cavity," he
said in a low voice, "and the heart is not
working properly now. Things are in a bad way,
really."

"But you
will send for Shrek?" said Olga Ivanovna.

"He has been
already. It was he noticed that the diphtheria
had passed into the nose. What's the use of
Shrek! Shrek's no use at all, really. He is
Shrek, I am Korostelev, and nothing more."

The time dragged on
fearfully slowly. Olga Ivanovna lay down in her
clothes on her bed, that
had not been made all
day, and sank into a doze. She dreamed that
the whole flat was filled up from floor to
ceiling with a huge piece of iron, and that if
they could only get the iron out they would
all be light-hearted and happy. Waking,
she realized that it was not the iron but
Dymov's illness that was weighing on her.

And
again the iron was there. . . . The time
dragged on slowly, though the clock on the
lower storey struck frequently. And bells
were continually ringing as the doctors
arrived. . . . The house-maid came in with
an empty glass on a tray, and asked, "Shall I
make the bed, madam?" and getting no answer,
went away.

The
clock below struck the hour. She dreamed of
the rain on the Volga; and again some one came
into her bedroom, she thought a stranger. Olga
Ivanovna jumped up, and recognized Korostelev.

"What time is it?" she
asked.

"About
three."

"Well,
what is it?"

"What,
indeed! . . . I've come to tell you he is
passing. . . ."

He
gave a sob, sat down on the bed beside her,
and wiped away the tears with his sleeve. She
could
not grasp it at once, but turned cold all
over and began slowly crossing herself.

"He is passing,"
he repeated in a shrill voice, and again he
gave a sob. "He is dying because he sacrificed
himself. What a loss for science!" he said
bitterly." Compare him with all of us. He
was a great man, an extraordinary man! What
gifts! What hopes we all had of him!" Korostelev
went on, wringing his hands: "Merciful God,
he was a man of science; we shall never
look on his like again. Osip Dymov,
what have you done -- aie, aie, my God!"

Korostelev covered his
face with both hands in despair, and shook
his head.

"And his
moral force," he went on, seeming to grow
more and more exasperated against some one.
"Not a man, but a pure, good, loving soul, and
clean as crystal. He served science and died
for science. And he worked like an ox night
and day -- no one spared him -- and with
his youth and his learning he had to take
a private practice and work at translations
at night to pay for these . . . vile rags!"

Korostelev looked with
hatred at Olga Ivanovna, snatched at the sheet
with both hands and angrily tore it, as though
it were to blame.

"He
did not spare himself, and others did not
spare him. Oh, what's the use of talking!"

"Yes, he was
a rare man," said a bass voice in the
drawing-room.

Olga
Ivanovna remembered her whole life with
him from
the beginning to the end, with all its details,
and suddenly she understood that he really was
an extraordinary, rare, and, compared with
every one else she knew, a great man. And
remembering how her father, now dead, and
all the other doctors had behaved to him, she
realized that they really had seen in him a
future celebrity. The walls, the ceiling,
the lamp, and the carpet on the floor,
seemed to be winking at her sarcastically,
as though they would say, "You were blind! you
were blind!" With a wail she flung herself out
of the bedroom, dashed by some unknown man in
the drawing-room, and ran into her husband's
study. He was lying motionless on the sofa,
covered to the waist with a quilt. His face
was fearfully thin and sunken, and was of a
grayish-yellow colour such as is never seen
in the living; only from the forehead, from
the black eyebrows and from the familiar smile,
could he be recognized as Dymov. Olga Ivanovna
hurriedly felt his chest, his forehead,
and his hands. The chest was still warm, but
the forehead and hands were unpleasantly
cold, and the half-open eyes looked,
not at Olga Ivanovna, but at the quilt.

"Dymov!" she called
aloud, "Dymov!" She wanted to explain to him
that it had been a mistake, that all was not
lost, that life might still be beautiful
and happy, that he was an extraordinary,
rare, great man, and that she would
all her life worship him and bow down in
homage and holy awe before him. . . .

"Dymov!" she
called him, patting him on the
shoulder, unable to believe that he
would never wake again. "Dymov! Dymov!"

In the drawing-room
Korostelev was saying to the housemaid:

"Why keep asking? Go
to the church beadle and enquire where they
live. They'll wash the body and lay it out,
and do everything that is necessary."